


Every Time We Say Goodbye

by sister_wolf



Category: Catwoman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Bittersweet, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-05
Updated: 2005-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-12 05:39:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_wolf/pseuds/sister_wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They'd agreed to have an entire evening just for the two of them-- no capes, no masks, no Batman and Catwoman-- just Bruce and Selina.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Time We Say Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> A missing scene from Catwoman v.2 #32, set during Bruce and Selina's date night. The title is from a John Coltrane song off the album "My Favorite Things."

They're lying tangled together in her dimly-lit bedroom, sweat drying on their skin, in a comfortable afterglow that almost makes what they have together seem normal. As if they're two ordinary people, not... who and what they are.

"What made you decide to change your costume?" Bruce asks. The way she's lying, Selina can actually feel his voice rumbling in his chest. She's not a short woman, and her job involves a lot more strength training than most people would suspect, but Bruce is absolutely huge compared to her. She takes full advantage of this by lying on him like he's the world's most dangerous bearskin rug.

Selina smiles to herself. "It was time for a change. That costume was completely impractical, really. I'm amazed that I wore it for so long."

She's not sure how the conversation meandered to the topic of her old costume. It doesn't really matter. Bruce's big, scarred hands are stroking up and down her spine, and Selina is filled with a sleepy feeling of contentment that's far too rare, in her life, not to be precious.

"Hmm. I liked the boots."

"Heh. I'll _bet_ you did." She can remember, back when they first started this dance, being surprised that he wasn't more kinky. In her experience, most guys who dress in head-to-toe black latex (or kevlar/nomex blend, in his case), have certain _expectations_ about a girl who carries a whip. Bruce is surprisingly vanilla, all things considered. He likes having sex on rooftops, which she thinks has more to do with being able to feel his city around him than it does with exhibitionism. However, he _really_ likes leather on her. There have been a few times when they barely made it to a rooftop in time.

"I've still got the boots, you know," Selina says, propping herself up on her elbows and smirking at him. "I could pull them out of the closet, if you'd like. For old time's sake."

"Mmm." It used to frustrate her how little Bruce says, back when she couldn't read his expressions or decipher his body language. These days, it's a bit disturbing how much information about Bruce's moods she can get from just the quirk of his eyebrow or the way he holds his shoulders. Right now, his eyes say that he's very, very relaxed (for him), and that he's thinking about fucking her in just the boots. She's completely on board with that plan.

"The boots _were_ very nice, but that bodysuit..." Selina shakes her head. "Have you ever tried to get motor oil out of spandex? It's completely impossible. I went through more bodysuits... not to _mention_ the hair."

"I liked the hair." Bruce rubs the short-cropped hair at the back of her neck and Selina hums contentedly, pushing back into the pressure like a cat being stroked. "Though the short hair is starting to grow on me."

"Waist-length hair after crawling through heating ducts is _not_ a pretty sight. It used to get horribly snarled. Not to mention all the DNA evidence I was probably leaving behind."

She can feel him tense up at that reminder of her criminal past. It's a sore subject between them, and something they generally try their best to avoid talking about. Yes, these days she's gone mostly straight, protecting the East End of Gotham from those who would prey upon it, but that doesn't change the fact that she's a thief. She's a master thief, and she's not going to pretend that she feels any sort of remorse about it. The only thing she regrets about the years she spent living and stealing among the rich and famous is that she allowed herself to forget where she came from. She grew up in the East End, and she did whatever she had to do in order to survive. She never had the _luxury_ of worrying about right and wrong. Not like Bruce.

Selina closes her eyes, deliberately pushing the anger away. They'd agreed to have an entire evening just for the two of them-- no capes, no masks, no Batman and Catwoman-- just Bruce and Selina. They never have a chance to spend this much time together, and she'll be damned if she'll allow this old argument to ruin it.

When she opens her eyes, she can tell that he knows exactly what she was just thinking about. He brushes a thumb across her cheekbone, and it's as good as a promise that he won't bring it up tonight, either.

"Thirsty?" she asks. He makes a noncommittal noise. She kisses him on the nose and rolls out of bed before he can retaliate. It amuses the hell out of her to do things like that-- cute boyfriend/girlfriend things, like they're a couple of teenagers or something. She's pretty sure it irritates him, but he puts up with it. Neither one of them had a chance to be teenagers, really (his childhood ended in an alley, kneeling with his parents dead on the ground; her childhood ended in an alley, kneeling in front of some guy for a twenty), so she figures she's got a right to do stupid, cute things once in a while if she wants to.

Pouring herself a glass of water, Selina sips it as she wanders to the large windows in the living room that overlook one of the nicest parts of the East End. She's well aware that a square of scraggly grass and stunted trees surrounded by rows of brownstones wouldn't strike most people as especially 'nice,' but compared to the way it looked before Catwoman started looking out for the neighborhood...

There's a deliberately loud step on the hardwood floor behind her, followed by strong arms sliding around her midsection, pulling her back against a broad chest. Selina smiles as she finishes her glass of water. She's finally got him trained not to surprise her. It only took a few repetitions for the lesson, "If you come up behind Selina and grab her when she's not expecting it, she _will_ attempt to scratch your eyes out on pure reflex," to sink in. Not that it's not a hell of a lot of fun to spar with Batman (it's one of the reasons why she stuck around Gotham all these years, after all), but she prefers to save it for when she's at work.

"May I have this dance, Ms. Kyle?" he asks, sounding-- not like Bruce Wayne, professional himbo, but-- not like Batman, either. Maybe this _is_ the real Bruce Wayne, after all.

She puts her glass down on the windowsill and spins around in his arms, smiling up at him with an eyebrow quirked. "Dance with you? But I'm afraid there's no music, Mr. Wayne."

"A problem easily solved," he says, sliding one hand down her arm, clasping her hand in his and dancing her toward the stereo to the beat of an imaginary waltz.

He's wearing his boxers again-- heaven forbid that Bruce Wayne should wander around her apartment naked. They're nice, black silk boxers, though, so she can't fault him on his taste. She's completely nude, comfortable in her own skin in a way that she suspects Bruce never has been.

He snags a CD off her shelf and puts it in the player, all without taking his left hand off her waist. The opening notes of "Everytime We Say Goodbye" spill across the dark apartment, filled with longing and regret, as Bruce pulls her close. They sway to the beat, his arms around her, Selina's head against his shoulder. She can feel him nuzzling the crown of her head. _Who would have thought the Batman could be such a softy?_ , Selina thinks, refusing to acknowledge the prickling in her own eyes.

"I thought I'd lost you," he says, repeating what he said earlier, before he kissed her like it was the first time and the last time all rolled into one. "Try not to do that again."

"What, disappear for a month because an ancient Egyptian cat cult decided I was fated to marry their prince?"

Bruce doesn't exactly stumble, but there's a definite hesitation before he resumes their slow glide across the floor. "Really."

"Yes, really. Apparently I've been blessed by their cat goddess or something. I tried to tell them it was just a costume, but some people will believe anything. So I convinced the guy that I was supposed to marry that the cat goddess wouldn't approve of a marriage where the bride wasn't willing, and we fought our way out of the palace together." Omari. Nice kid, but a little too impressionable. She hopes he'll be happy, wherever he ends up.

"That's..." He shakes his head, looking down at her with an enigmatic little smile. She's not sure what she's reading in his eyes, but it's definitely a good thing. "Only you, Selina."

They dance for a while, drifting through the apartment until by mutual accord they end up relaxing on her sofa, Selina snuggling against his scarred chest while his hands trace the notes of the music across her skin.

She knows he won't spend the night, knows that it may be months, if ever, before they have a chance to be together like this again. Knows all of the reasons why this will never work.

But none of that matters right now. They have this moment, and that is enough. It'll have to be.

Selina kisses the faint silver scars her claws left over Bruce's heart, and allows herself to fall asleep in his arms. Tomorrow will come soon enough.


End file.
